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Mastering Linux Shell Scripting

You're reading from   Mastering Linux Shell Scripting A practical guide to Linux command-line, Bash scripting, and Shell programming

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Product type Paperback
Published in Apr 2018
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781788990554
Length 284 pages
Edition 2nd Edition
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Authors (2):
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Mokhtar Ebrahim Mokhtar Ebrahim
Author Profile Icon Mokhtar Ebrahim
Mokhtar Ebrahim
Andrew Mallett Andrew Mallett
Author Profile Icon Andrew Mallett
Andrew Mallett
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Table of Contents (17) Chapters Close

Preface 1. The What and Why of Scripting with Bash FREE CHAPTER 2. Creating Interactive Scripts 3. Conditions Attached 4. Creating Code Snippets 5. Alternative Syntax 6. Iterating with Loops 7. Creating Building Blocks with Functions 8. Introducing the Stream Editor 9. Automating Apache Virtual Hosts 10. AWK Fundamentals 11. Regular Expressions 12. Summarizing Logs with AWK 13. A Better lastlog with AWK 14. Using Python as a Bash Scripting Alternative 15. Assessments 16. Other Books You May Enjoy

Reading user input

If we want the welcome message to greet us by name, no matter whether we supply the argument to the script or not, we can add in a prompt to capture the data while the script is running. Python makes this simple and easy to implement. We can see, from the edited file shown in the screenshot that follows, how this is achieved:

We make use of a new variable in the script that we set in the main block, initially, to be an empty string. We set it here to make the variable available to the complete script and all code blocks:

The input function in Python 3 (or raw_input in Python 2) can be used to get user input. We store that input in the name variable. If we have supplied an argument we pick it up on the code in the else block and set the name variable to the first supplied argument. It is this that is used in the print statement back in the main block.

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